Flowers
by EliH2
Summary: Just a short little one-shot set during the time that Booth was "dead." Brennan looks for flowers, reads a poem, and realizes something.


This is just a little one-shot that wouldn't leave me alone

**This is just a little one-shot that wouldn't leave me alone. It is set sometime during the two weeks of Booth's "death." This is the kind of thing that I wish they had shown us instead of just jumping to the funeral. As usual, I own nothing that you recognize, I'm just borrowing. Don't sue me.**

She hadn't wanted to go. This was absolutely ridiculous. To her, funerals were pointless, commercialized, and absurd, but Brennan could see the value and importance that they held to other people. It's why she tried to go to the funeral of every person she identified. It meant something, at least to those still living. But shopping for flowers to bring to a funeral that she didn't' want to attend in the first place was absurd. Leave it to Angela to force her to conform to some ridiculous social nicety.

What was she supposed to buy anyway? How could you buy flowers to honor a person who has died when you feel like you should be the one in that coffin?

Brennan felt like that in more way than one. The bullet had been meant for her. She wasn't the one with a little son. The son who's hero was never coming home. And she had been numb ever since the doctor's had said those few words. She hadn't been able to mourn her partner, her friend. Almost like she _had_ been the one killed. Part of her recognized that she hadn't really absorbed it: that she couldn't believe that the man who had promised never to leave her was gone.

But another part of her, a big part, had just… shut down. Which left her walking aisles lined with flowers for all occasions, with a face devoid of any flicker of emotion. She wasn't even in the right section. Not surprising really. She had been cruising on autopilot for a long time now. What was surprising was the section that she _had_ ended up in. The romance section. _I wasn't paying attention. It means absolutely nothing._ Suddenly, a flower arrangement with a poem attached to it caught her eye. The arrangement was striking, but it was the poem that caught her attention. It was big, or written in calligraphy. In fact, it was in every way unremarkable. As if an aspiring poet had attached it to the floral arrangement that they didn't really want to be creating. There she went with the speculation again. Quickly her mind closed off that line of thinking and all the things it would lead to. Turning her attention back to the small slip of paper she read over the poem.

_Flowers_

_Flowers are beautiful_

_And easy to love:_

_Simple and unchanging_

_To love a person_

_Is a much greater risk_

_For people_

_Are not at all simple_

_And change all the time_

_But loving flowers_

_Is not truly love_

_For love involves_

_Push and pull_

_Give and take_

_In short-_

_Loving a person is harder_

_But much better _

_For the soul_

Something inside Brennan broke as she read the poem. Tears finally slipped down her face. That was exactly what she had done. She had allowed herself to love more than flowers, more than the simple, easy things. Temperance Brennan had finally allowed some of the barriers to come down. Barriers that had kept her safe, but also confined her. She had allowed herself to depend on a person, more than one person. She depended on her team, and Booth. And she hadn't even realized it.

Wiping away her tears, she almost ran towards the section for which she had originally come. She grabbed the most expensive arrangement, and headed towards the front desk. Without speaking she swiped her credit card and took off out the door. Brennan hurried towards her car, battling emotions that had been locked up for too long. She unlocked the doors, and tossed the costly flowers inside with very little regard. She settled herself into the driver's seat, and froze. She couldn't bring herself to do anything, to start the car, to drive. A quiet hiccup escaped her mouth, followed by a small sob. And another. Her sobs grew in volume and intensity, and fresh tears fell from her eyes, sprinkling her hands. She cried for a long time. Brennan cried for her mother, and her father, and for the poor, lost child that she had been. She cried for Pam, the women she had killed, and for every murder victim that she identified. But there was one person that she did not cry for. Temperance Brennan did not sob once in the name of Special Agent Seely Booth. Not because she didn't care for him, but because despite the fact that the poem had finally breached whatever wall had held back her emotions, she still could not bring herself to fully accept that her partner was dead.

Her erratic sobs calmed down, and she was finally able to start the car. With salty tears still streaming down her cheeks, she drove home, and when she went to bed that night, part of her expected to be awakened by insistent knocking of a familiar man carrying boxes of Chinese food.

**AU: This was my first Bones fic. This could actually be a two-shot very easily if you guy would like. Hit the little button and write a review. You know you want to, and it would make me very happy.**


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